1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a blade server chassis or housing.
2. Background of the Related Art
There is continual pressure to increase the density of computing devices. Many of the existing resources necessary to operate a computer system or datacenter can be leveraged to support additional capacity if additional computing devices can be configured to fit within the existing chassis, racks and datacenters. While much of this effort relies upon the redesign of individual components, there is much to be gained from redesign of systems to utilize space more efficiently.
Blade servers provide a high density of computing capacity. Each blade includes a separate server, yet the individual server housing is kept small in part because a blade server chassis provides supporting components separate from the server blade. For example, the blade server chassis may include power supplies, fan packs, network switches, a management module, and a midplane for making connections efficiently within the chassis. The blade server chassis may, in turn, be supported in a rack along with other blade server chassis or other computing devices.
While blade servers have become widely accepted and utilized, the continual pressure to increase computing density has led to the development of a double-dense blade server. The idea of a double-dense blade server is to provide two servers in a housing having the same form factor as an existing blade server. In this manner, the installed base of blade server chassis can still be used to support the operation of a double-dense blade server.